Here at Leapfrogg, we have a panel of more than 800 premium retail consumers that we engage with on a regular basis to help us understand customer needs and expectations from the brands and retailers they buy from.

Every month, we question them on a range of areas from buying behaviours and brand opinion, to emotional purchase triggers and their recent shopping experiences.

The Insight Edit is our weekly bite size edit of the insight we gain from our panel in our search to truly understand the mind of the premium customer.

As the importance of social media within the digital marketing mix continues to increase, retailers are focusing on how to measure the commercial impact of those channels.

In light of this, we wanted to find out if social media had influenced purchasing designs for premium retail consumers within the last six months.

To do this, we asked our Premium Panel if they followed any of their favourite brands on their social channels.

We then asked those who replied ‘yes’ (57%), if they had purchased a product from a brand as a direct result of seeing it on a social media. As a result, 55% of our panel said that they had been directly influenced on those channels to purchase a product.

The fact that nearly 30% of our respondents were able to recall a time where social media played a role in their purchasing decisions underlines the importance of brands getting the communication on their social channels right!

When you’re planning your social engagement strategy, make sure you really understand which of your customers are engaging with you online and communicate with them accordingly. Different customers will follow you on different channels. One size does not fit all, so ensure you do not put the same message and communication out across all your social channels.

To find out more, you can download our series of ‘Engagement Reports’ to find out which brands we believe are doing the best job of engaging their customers across their social channels.